[Leica] OT, sort of: CS2, what's the verdict?

[ericm at pobox.com (Eric)]

Ken:

I'm not sure what CS2 introduced over CS or 7...  I skipped from Photoshop 3
to CS2.  :)

What makes CS2 worth every single penny I paid it is both camera raw and the
ability to run actions on all the files in a single folder.  I can get
"proof" my images without actually using Photoshop itself.  I use bridge to
go through and make first round selections.  Add a star to the pics worth a
second look.  Then, I only show pics with one star.  From that group, I add
a star to everything...so everything is now 2 stars.  Show only pics with
two stars.  And then I start removing a star from the ones that aren't quite
as good as others.  If I really want to do a tight edit, I'll go into a
third round, too.

Then, I select all the files with 2 stars and rename them to my naming
convention:  datecreated_sequence.  Love the power of the renaming feature
of bridge.  Open 'em all up in camera raw, and start making tweaks so the
pictures look right.  Then, I save 'em all as PSD files to an "incoming
folder."  The last part is I have a couple actions that resize to 600 pixels
and 150 pixels, along with applying a little sharpening.  Save as level 5
jpegs.  Run a utility to strip off the exif data, and I'm ready to upload.

In the past, where I'd average 9 scanned film frames per hour, I can now
easily put up 60-80 images in an hour.  And until I decide which pictures
are my real keepers, I don't go in and make manual adjustments in Photoshop
itself.



--
Eric
http://canid.com/